The Fishbowl
by all-shattered-ones
Summary: Welcome to the Fishbowl. You won't like it here. Here, Everything you cherish get's taken away from you. Neighbours, friends, siblings killing each other, thinking they have no choice. Everything is one big mess really, and I couldn't even say who's fault that is.


**So, quite some time ago, I was writing a story called The Fishbowl. It kind died though, and now, two years later, I have again decided to give it another try. I want to once again pursue the story I had in mind two years ago, but there was so much that I disliked and wanted to change in the original story, that I decided to rewrite it.**

**This story is an AU sort of FAYZ, that happens somewhere completely else, with other characters. I know this has been done plenty of times before. I don't really care. I just want to write down the story in my head.**

**So this how it begins. Tell me what you think!**

* * *

'Guys,' they heard him scream a far way back. Rick was the only one in the group to actually react to it. He stopped with his bicycle and Jonathan barely managed to stop before he crashed into his friend.

'Rick!' he exclaimed, 'watch it will you!' Now the others were already a little further, and they stopped to wait for the rest of their group, a little annoyed by the delay.

'Eddie's calling us,' remarked Rick.

'Yeah, so? He's complaining. He's just being lazy, don't give in to that.'

The others had cycled back to them. 'If he's not coming, he might as well go home. I have better things to do you know,' Gina said with a snarl.

'He's just not so …athletically fit,' Rick replied. He stared back at his friend Eddie. The guy was barely visibly with his green shirt standing next to the trees and bushes. 'Look,' Rick continued, 'he's waving at us to wait for him. Give him some time. He'll catch up with us.'

'Well, I want to be home by the time he has catched up with us. How far is it anyway? We've been cycling for ages and my arm is getting sore from that stupid bag.' Gina let her arms and head rest on the handlebar of her bicycle.

'We're almost at the camping site,' said Jonathan. 'Hadn't somebody said it'd be before the camping site?'

They all looked at each other then, all trying to remember who it was that knew the way. Finally, Keith spoke. 'Wasn't it Eddie who knew the way?' When he got no reply, he said 'okay, let's go back.'

Eddie was red and panting from the jumping, waving and yelling when they got back, but he subtly tried to hide this by turning around, facing the bushes. 'It's this way, down that road' he said, 'know for sure.' He pointed to a faint path through the trees.

'Seriously?' Gina almost screamed. 'That's not a road. That's just an area with less leaves.' But Keith, Jonathan and Rick had already dumped their bicycles against trees and had taken the bags off the handlebars. Once they were ready, they all left the sunshine to follow Eddie into the chilly shadows of the trees.

'Disgusting!' shrieked Gina at the sight of a snail. She held her arms around her body, as if that would protect her from the snail, and fastened her pace.

'Don't you now wish you hadn't skipped class when the groups were assigned?' said Jonathan, 'or you could've been in a group with you friends and make a movie about shopping.'

'I was ill,' she replied. 'And that sounds better than a movie about old people and snails.'

The path started to descent, and before Eddie's feet, it sloped down so steeply, that you'd have to hold onto the trees to get yourself down safely. He opened his arms and said, 'but where the snails are, is the adventure.'

They started their way down hopping from trees to bushes, and at the same time carrying the bags. Jonathan was pausing behind a tree, thinking of a strategy to get to the next tree with the minimum risk of slipping, when he noticed Rick was already coming his way.

'No, Rick, stop! I'm here already, stay away from my tree!' It was already too late for that. Rick was coming down the slope fast, and could only be stopped by hitting something. Yet he didn't stop when he hit Jonathan. The two boys and the bags filled with costumes tumbled down the slope. Once they had arrived at the bottom of the slope, medieval themed costumes were scattered all over the area. Keith and Gina were already down the slope by now and could not stop laughing.

Jonathan raised himself and cursed. When he saw that the content of his bag had been spilled, he said, 'I'm not picking that up, Rick!'

The lank boy put on the pink princess hat he found next to him and shrugged. Eddie was now the only one still on the slope. 'Hey, Ed,' he screamed, 'pick those up will you?' He, on his turn nodded and carefully picked up the crown by his foot.

It took 15 minutes and 20 complaints from Gina and Jonathan for him to get down the slope with all the costumes. Nobody had offered to help Eddie because in the distance they had heard the falling of water and, by walking just a little further, the woods opened into a clearing with the greenest grass as a carpet. The clearing was cut through half by a the river, shimmering in the sun like a knife. It was by the water that they sat down and closed their eyes for a while.

* * *

Her mother opened her bag to find her son a piece of gum. 'Here you go, Josh. Do you want one too, Moira?' Her voice was accompanied by the shrieking sound of the train.

Moira removed her stare from the window, and shook her head.

'I have your book here as well,' said her mother then. 'Don't you want to read? It's still at least two hours until we get there.'

'Sure.'

Her mother pulled out the book and Moira leaned forward to receive it. It fell on the ground before it got even close to her hand. Moira was astonished. A second ago, she had been sitting here with her mother and her brother in the compartment. Now she was alone .The bench in front of her was empty, as if the density of her mother and her brother was burned away with the speed of light. She did not know what to think or how to move. Her first reaction was that she had to be dreaming. Now she would wake up, she convinced herself. She shook her head heavily and tried to open her eyes, actually open her eyes. But it didn't work, she didn't find herself in her own bed, in her own room.

She even started to count her fingers. Ten. Could she remember what she has been doing today? Yes she could. She remembered going to the station and getting on the train to visit grandmother. She remembered eating a subway for lunch and she remembered how she and her brother had been arguing just minutes ago. This was not a dream.

The train passed a station at full speed. She could catch a glimpse of the name of the station. Voxe. She was certain that the train was supposed to make a stop at Voxe, and suddenly she felt very uncomfortably in the train.

She opened the compartment and as she made her way to the front, she looked through the window of each of the compartments she passed. They were all empty. She had gotten on the train at the previous station, and she could tell for certain that they hadn't been the only people one the train then. Had everyone disappeared from the train except her? Was this some crazy prank and was she being filmed right now, to be showed on a cheap tv-show and laughed at?

She heard a bang, outside the train and far in the distance, as for what she could judge. At that moment she started to run towards the front of the vehicle. She opened the door that led to the cab and to her surprise, it was open. Less to her surprise, did she find it to be empty. In front of the empty seat was a dashboard filled with buttons and three levers. She hesitated, but could find any sign to what would stop the train. Before she could make up her mind, she pulled all three levers. Then she stood silent and noticed, to her excitement, that the train was actually slowing down. Moira jumped up once out of excitement and when she knew for certain that the train was coming to a stop she ran back to the compartment she had been sitting in with her family.

She had hope, but was disappointed. There was still no sign of them. 'This is probably a dream, it must be, right?' she said to herself before laughing emptiness. There was no reply. 'I'll just play along then.'

There was no way she could get the doors to open. She used her mother's pocket knife to break a glass box that read emergency in red letters and fiddled out the small hammer. She hit the window of the compartment without really knowing if she was being wise. The class broke and she made sure the gap was big enough for her to get through safely. Before she left the train, she picked up her book, put it in her mother's bag and hang it on her shoulder.

She landed in the high, yellow grass. On the other side of a ditch was a small road. The water was a little wider than she could jump, but she was without any care. She took off her shoes and threw them across the ditch. Then she stripped up her jeans and made the jump. She landed in the water up to her ankles. Better than she had expected. She tried to dry her legs with the grass, but kept her shoes in her hand. Further down the road was a house. Or probably a farm. Barefoot, Moira started walking.

* * *

Jonathan unpacked his materials. He had his camera ready on a tripod. 'Alright, I think we can do the first scene, the one where Keith and Eddie fight. You guys ready?'

The two of them had put on their knight costumes, wooden swords in hand. Except for the colour differences in their costumes, where they only distinguishable by the difference in posture and the peaks of blonde hair coming out from under Keith's helmet. They took their positions in front of each other. Gina stood behind them, a little further away and closer to the river. She wore a pink princess dress that she wouldn't have fit if she hadn't been small for her age.

'Okay Gina, I want you to faint about halfway through the fight, don't forget that.'

'How do I know it's halfway?'

'I'll raise my hand, okay?'

She raised a thumb and Jonathan put on his camera. The boys had just started to slam the wooden swords against each other when there was a the faint noise of an airplane crossing in the high sky.

'Wait,' said Gina, 'there's an airplane in your shot. I don't think they had those in the middle ages.'

Jonathan was looking at the screen of his camera, a big frown on his face. 'Not only that. What is Rick doing there on the other side of the river?'

'He wanted to get apples from the tree,' answered Eddie. 'Said he was hungry.'

'Why does he have to do that in my shot! And how does he think he's doing that anyway? He keeps on laying on that branch and dangling with his legs.'

Gina laughed aloud. 'He's stuck! Ha, don't stop filming, don't stop filming this is great!'

They all went to stand behind the camera to clear the view and enjoyed the spectacle on the other side of the river, laughing. That was until the explosion in the sky. They'd never be as happy since that explosion.


End file.
